Victorian Womanhood, in All Its Guises
Frances Benjamin Johnston's self-portraits show a woman was never content playing just one role
- By Victoria Olsen
- Smithsonian magazine, May 2010, Subscribe
Frances Benjamin Johnston made her name as a photographer in the 1890s, taking portraits of the political elite in Washington, D.C.—society hostesses such as Phoebe Hearst, and the wives of President Grover Cleveland’s cabinet members. At the same time, she befriended artists and other outsiders, hosted costume balls in her studio and traveled the country unescorted. Among the 20,000-odd prints she donated to the Library of Congress in 1947—including not only her portraiture, but also a substantial body of photojournalism—are the two self-portraits on these pages.
One shows her as a bohemian: holding a cigarette and a beer stein, crossing her legs like a man and revealing her petticoats, leaning aggressively forward, as if in mid-conversation (or confrontation). The photograph, taken around 1896, is self-consciously assertive—“She would not have actually sat that way and done all of those things at one time,” writes Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies at Yale University. The portrait seems to play with the Victorian assumption that unconventional women were somehow “masculine.” By ironic contrast, there’s the undated self-portrait showing her full face, in fur and beribboned hat, her gloved hand occupied in the delicate support of her chin. This lady is proper—and yet she, too, seems to toy with the conventions on display. As Johnston’s biographer Bettina Berch points out, these self-portraits “show viewers there was more than one woman, more than one consciousness, behind the surface they saw.”
These two self-portraits, along with several others, including some in which she wears men’s clothes, were not widely circulated in Johnston’s lifetime. Yet they define two poles of Victorian womanhood. While we might assume that women of Johnston’s time were forced to choose one role or the other, she made a career out of playing many (much as contemporary, role-playing photographer Cindy Sherman would do a century later).
Johnston was born, in 1864, without wealth but with good connections: her father, Anderson Johnston, was head bookkeeper in the Treasury Department, and her mother, Frances Antoinette Johnston, was a Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. They supported their only child’s interest in art, sending her to Paris to study painting. Returning to Washington in 1885, Johnston, then 21, set out to support herself, first as a magazine illustrator and later as a freelance photographer. Her commissions ranged from taking pictures of coal miners underground to documenting educational institutions, such as the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), founded to educate former slaves. Her photographs of schools were displayed at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900 as evidence of America’s progress in education. Toward the end of her career she turned to photographing gardens and Southern architecture, preserving views of many antebellum buildings that have since been razed.
While Johnston was running her studio in Washington, feminist campaigns to secure the vote and other rights were encouraging women to break out of their domestic roles. In 1897, she published an article in the Ladies’ Home Journal urging women to consider photography as a means of supporting themselves. “To an energetic, ambitious woman with even ordinary opportunities, success is always possible,” she wrote, adding that “hard, intelligent and conscientious work seldom fails to develop small beginnings into large results.” Johnston also used her influence to help other American female artists—for example, arranging exhibits of their work for the 1900 Paris Exposition. Her portraits of Susan B. Anthony, taken that same year, capture the stoic determination that the feminist leader needed—for half a century—to hold together the competing groups working toward women’s suffrage. And yet there is no evidence that Johnston ever participated in a feminist campaign.
She maintained her independence, financially and artistically, till she died, in 1952, at age 88. Wexler writes that Johnston was one of several women who “held a very significant place in American photography at the turn of the century and then were ‘lost’ to history.” Now, 90 years after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, Johnston’s bohemian artist still urges women forward at the same time her proper Victorian lady reminds us all to look back at what we have achieved. In both cases, the images show a woman using every angle to forge a new identity for herself and for the legions of women who would follow her.
Victoria Olsen last wrote for the magazine on Cindy Sherman’s self-portraits.
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Comments (4)
I have found an autographed self portrait, can i send you a copy to validate its her. It is signed Fr. Ben Johnston in pencil.
Posted by eric on October 11,2011 | 11:54 AM
Can I get the magazine on my computer as well as by the mail.
Thanks, Michael
Posted by Michael Keehan MD FACS on May 8,2010 | 11:19 AM
I was delighted to see an article about Frances B. Johnston. She's special to me: I have portrayed her for the West Virginia Humanities Council's History Alive! program since 2006. I was attracted to her as a character to develop because of her complexity--as a consummate business woman and as a Bohemian (her biographer supplies plenty of evidence for both aspects of her personality). Her self portraits are a study in contrasts as well: the rhetoric of the images as she represented herself is fascinating. She's been a blast to portray for school groups, libraries, and many other civic organizations and it's an honor to "recover" her from history. By the way, we in West Virginia believe she was born here, in Grafton, WV. So we claim her as one of our own.
Few know about Ms. Johnston--that is--unless you count the librarians at the Library of Congress where her photos and papers reside. When I researched her there, they seemed to be very familiar with one of their most colorful and talented past residents. When I asked for the micro film of her diaries, they replied, "Oh she's in the next room," giving me the feeling she was just down the hall in the loo and would be right back. Fascinating lady who observed and preserved much of American History and in turn, made history herself.
Thanks!
Posted by Cat Pleska on May 6,2010 | 03:36 PM
Perhaps the author is imposing modern sensibilities on the artist Frances B. Johnston' work. You see feminist commentary in the "bohemian" self-portrait; I see a formal study in composition. The artist studied in Paris during the Impressionist era, and was no doubt influenced by those artists' work. Many used compositional grids (dividing an image by thirds or fifths were typical) based on the "Golden Mean," to make more visually balanced and subliminally appealing images. Such a grid is plain in the photo. Her figure is posed dead center; bisect the photo vertically, and you'll see how she aligned the mantel vase with the back of her head, the edge of the stein, and her raised foot. Horizontally, the top of the open hearth aligns with the top of the table at right. As to the "aggressive" position of her torso, bisect the image from top left to bottom right; the angle of her body repeats that line. Nothing in this image looks accidental. While she may have had fun mocking the conventions of her day, I suspect the artist was more interested in composition than any political statement.
Posted by Deborah Budd on April 27,2010 | 06:36 PM